What Does Lake Highlands Want?

Let me start by saying that I don't have a dog in this fight. Call me agnostic. Non-denominational. Unitarian Universalist. ☪☮⚥✡☥☯✝. Whatever. I don't have children in Lake Highlands schools. I don't own a house in Lake Highlands. Whatever is decided there to address overcrowding is unlikely to affect me. I'd go along with pretty much any solution that the community there can rally around. That's the nut of the problem. The community is not rallying around any solution. Anything that's proposed gets shot down by some faction or another. I'd hate to be the Richardson ISD administrators or school board. It's beginning to look like any solution that they adopt is going to piss off one group or another. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

IMDB

Hateful Eight (2015): Like an Agatha Christie dinner party murder mystery stage play shot in 70mm by Quentin Tarantino. If you like him... A-

POTD: Of Forts and Canyons

From 2016 02 07 Ranthambore

Today's photo-of-the-day is of Fort Ranthambore in the heart of India's Ranthambore National Park. The fort is the reason the national park exists. The park was formed from the former hunting grounds of the Maharajah of Jaipur, who lived in the fort.

Yet my headline says, "Forts and Canyons." The canyon is Texas's own Palo Duro Canyon. Opposite side of the world. Palo Duro Canyon has its own story to tell, one featured in a previous POTD. Seeing Fort Ranthambore evoked a strong memory of seeing Palo Duro Canyon. Go ahead, click the link and check it out. Maybe you see it, too. It's a small world...inside my head.

Chi-Raq (2015)

IMDB

Chi-Raq (2015): Lysistrata set in Chicago's South Side by Spike Lee. Daring concept. Worthy effort. Hard to revive a 2,500 yr old drama. C+

POTD: Butting Heads

Butting heads. No, I'm not talking about the recent school board election (in the end, that turned out to be not much of a fight at all). And I'm certainly not talking about the presidential election (that headline would be "Butthead," not "Butting Heads").

No, today's photo-of-the-day is from Ranthambore National Park in India's Rajasthan province, where these two Sambar deer practiced their fighting skills for us tourists (or, more likely, for the nearby herd of female Sambar deer).

From 2016 02 07 Ranthambore

Review: Between the World and Me

Amazon

From Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it. I tell you now that the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life, and the pursuit of this question, I have found, ultimately answers itself."

A letter from a father to a son, explaining what it means to be black in America. It's not written for me, a white man lost in the Dream, but I need it, too. Maybe the most.

After the jump, my review.

Spring in the Steger Garden (2016)

From Flowers

Bonus photo after the jump.

Look Who's Back (2015)

IMDB

Look Who's Back (2015): Hitler in time warp wakes up in 2014, sets out to make Germany great again. No shit. Life imitates art. B-

The Wheel Award for Excellence in Documentaries

Oscar night is long gone. Oscar picked "Amy" for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. I've finally gotten around to viewing all five nominees and am ready to weigh in on the question of which documentary should have won. Can I get a drum roll?

POTD: The Star of Ranthambore

From 2016 02 07 Ranthanbore

There's nothing like a close encounter with a tiger in the wild at dawn to get the heart pumping for the day. Today's photo-of-the-day is from India's Ranthambore National Park and Tiger Reserve. The tiger in the photo is Sitara (aka T-28), the "Star" of Ranthambore (for the star-shaped mark above his left eye). This is the dominant tiger of the national park.

Tourists tour the park in open jeeps. People ask if it's safe. The answer is, yes, unless the tiger decides it isn't. The previous dominant male tiger was relocated last year to captivity in another park because of charges that he killed at least three humans. There were no incidents the day we visited. Sitara was the only tiger we saw. We have no way of knowing how many tigers saw us.

Bonus photo after the jump.